Unit per tile limit in cities

45°38'N-13°47'E · Jun 21, 2015

I was wondering: does it make sense at all to have a different limit for cities? Right now when you set a limit on units per tile (say 10), you can have as many as 40 units on the same tile if the tile is a city. Plus 40 others non-combatant. Does it make sense? AFAIK we used this strategy because when a city builds a unit the game was crashing if the city was already at limit. But with dbkblk's changes, this problem is already solved. If I'm not mistaken, surplus units are either moved outside the city or killed instantly when produced, to avoid CTD.
So what's the point in having a higher limit for cities? I think the limit should be the same. Certainly you can bring more troops to surround a city and hence have more units outside the city than the units that are defending. But if the limit is the same for every tile, you should have plenty of units to defend your cities surroundings. Moreover, defending a city you always have some bonus like walls or fortified units. So even when the same number of units is compared (attacker/defender), defender still has an advantage.
Finally, this should help AI in attacking city. I think sometimes AI doesn't attack because in its judgement the city is too strongly defended. Also, this should make battles outside a city more frequent. Right now unless some unit is left wandering all alone or unless it's trying to join a stack, most battles are made when attacking/defending a city. With my proposed change, I think we should see some battles occuring even in the tiles surrounding a city.
What's your opinion?

zeroRPGmaker · Jun 21, 2015

Not a bad idea. I agree that it would be good to test.

dbkblk · Jun 22, 2015

The xUPT city limit was made different because it is easier to take a city with xUPT. Basically, there are 9 tiles around a city, so 9 x xUPT units can attack. 4 units to defend was a good ratio. Less units on a city can make the city too easy to take but that could also be fun.

<Nexus> · Jun 22, 2015

45°38'N-13°47'E;13870722 said:
I was wondering: does it make sense at all to have a different limit for cities? Right now when you set a limit on units per tile (say 10), you can have as many as 40 units on the same tile if the tile is a city. Plus 40 others non-combatant. Does it make sense? AFAIK we used this strategy because when a city builds a unit the game was crashing if the city was already at limit. But with dbkblk's changes, this problem is already solved. If I'm not mistaken, surplus units are either moved outside the city or killed instantly when produced, to avoid CTD.
So what's the point in having a higher limit for cities? I think the limit should be the same. Certainly you can bring more troops to surround a city and hence have more units outside the city than the units that are defending. But if the limit is the same for every tile, you should have plenty of units to defend your cities surroundings. Moreover, defending a city you always have some bonus like walls or fortified units. So even when the same number of units is compared (attacker/defender), defender still has an advantage.
Finally, this should help AI in attacking city. I think sometimes AI doesn't attack because in its judgement the city is too strongly defended. Also, this should make battles outside a city more frequent. Right now unless some unit is left wandering all alone or unless it's trying to join a stack, most battles are made when attacking/defending a city. With my proposed change, I think we should see some battles occuring even in the tiles surrounding a city.
What's your opinion?

I agree.

45°38'N-13°47'E · Jun 22, 2015

dbkblk said:
The xUPT city limit was made different because it is easier to take a city with xUPT. Basically, there are 9 tiles around a city, so 9 x xUPT units can attack. 4 units to defend was a good ratio. Less units on a city can make the city too easy to take but that could also be fun.

I remember that but it doesn't look easier for AI. Probably that's one of the causes of AI not attacking. AI usually values the city too well defended. I suppose this is also because AI doesn't know how to coordinate multiple stacks attacking the same city. So while 4 stacks of 10 units might be able to attack a city defended by 40 units, each single stack is evaluating that it can't do it, hence not attacking. Moreover, if those 4 stacks also contain siege weapons, they will definitely be not enough, because AI can defend with more units. Not to mention defensive bonuses or buildings. So it looks to me that a city is well defended even when using the same UPT limit. And as I've said, even if that wouldn't be enough, I don't assume that there are 8 free tiles around a city because most of the times it's not like that: sometimes there are other units, or sea, or impassable mountains or at least a river which is slowing the attacker assault. I suggest we try with the same UPT limit. If that makes the game too easy, we'll revert the change.

nionios · Jun 22, 2015

If I play with 10 upt for example so in cities may defend 40 units but I've only one defending unit in a city how the AI can judge that the city is strongly defended?Does it only judge the maximum potential defending units?

45°38'N-13°47'E · Jun 22, 2015

nionios said:
If I play with 10 upt for example so in cities may defend 40 units but I've only one defending unit in a city how the AI can judge that the city is strongly defended?Does it only judge the maximum potential defending units?

It takes into consideration both stacks and strongest unit. But it never happened to me that a city wasn't attacked when defended by a single unit (unless maybe if you're attacking with archers a city defended by infantry).

Edit: if you have a save where AI isn't attacking your city defended by only 1 unit, please upload it.

nionios · Jun 22, 2015

45°38'N-13°47'E;13871516 said:
Edit: if you have a save where AI isn't attacking your city defended by only 1 unit, please upload it.

I haven't experienced something like that with my cities but I've seen this happening with AI vs AI (moreover the only defending unit was heavily injured).I've also seen the AI reluctant to attack even completely unguarded AI cities in older revisions.
No saves available.

45°38'N-13°47'E · Jun 22, 2015

nionios said:
I haven't experienced something like that with my cities but I've seen this happening with AI vs AI (moreover the only defending unit was heavily injured).I've also seen the AI reluctant to attack even completely unguarded AI cities in older revisions.
No saves available.

It definitely happened with past revisions but it shouldn't happen now. If you see something like this again, please post a save.

platyping · Jun 22, 2015

dbkblk said:
The xUPT city limit was made different because it is easier to take a city with xUPT. Basically, there are 9 tiles around a city, so 9 x xUPT units can attack. 4 units to defend was a good ratio. Less units on a city can make the city too easy to take but that could also be fun.

8 not 9

dbkblk · Jun 22, 2015

I agree with your POV 45° about the AI not attacking. That might a reason.
Be careful with the AI city production code however. It should probably be adjusted as the AI could produce unlimited units if it doesn't meet requirements (which were set for a 4 units limit). I might check that, but as you can see, I'm not really into development these days

Hint: For those who wanna try the perfect xUPT for cities, just change "UNITS_PER_TILES_CITY_FACTOR" into "Assets/XML/A_New_Dawn_GlobalDefines.xml".

45°38'N-13°47'E · Jun 22, 2015

dbkblk said:
I agree with your POV 45° about the AI not attacking. That might a reason.
Be careful with the AI city production code however. It should probably be adjusted as the AI could produce unlimited units if it doesn't meet requirements (which were set for a 4 units limit). I might check that, but as you can see, I'm not really into development these days

Hint: For those who wanna try the perfect xUPT for cities, just change "UNITS_PER_TILES_CITY_FACTOR" into "Assets/XML/A_New_Dawn_GlobalDefines.xml".

Thanks for the tip, I'll test some more and should problems arise I'll have a look at the production code. In theory anyway, since if I'm not mistaken newly produced units are moved outside the city when city limit has been reached already, even in case more units are produced with your production code, that might still be a good thing because you'll simply have more units on tiles surrounding a city. So while we are making easier to attack cities directly, in theory it will be a bit harder to reach them because you'll probably have to face other units moving around the city. Well, let's do some more test: if it works better, I'll upload the change.

dbkblk · Jun 22, 2015

I'll keep an eye on the changes

bryanw1995 · Jun 24, 2015

dbkblk said:
The xUPT city limit was made different because it is easier to take a city with xUPT. Basically, there are 9 tiles around a city, so 9 x xUPT units can attack. 4 units to defend was a good ratio. Less units on a city can make the city too easy to take but that could also be fun.

There are only 8 tiles around a city...

X----X----X
X----C----X
X----X----X

I like the OP's suggestion, it seems odd to have 4x the number of UPT available to a city. Is that the case with Forts also? You could put Forts all around a city in that case and really stack up the defenders...

45°38'N-13°47'E;13871577 said:
Thanks for the tip, I'll test some more and should problems arise I'll have a look at the production code. In theory anyway, since if I'm not mistaken newly produced units are moved outside the city when city limit has been reached already, even in case more units are produced with your production code, that might still be a good thing because you'll simply have more units on tiles surrounding a city. So while we are making easier to attack cities directly, in theory it will be a bit harder to reach them because you'll probably have to face other units moving around the city. Well, let's do some more test: if it works better, I'll upload the change.

Are you guys seeing more/most people playing with Xupt instead of unlimited? I've played so much ciV over the past few years that I'll admit to being used to only 1UPT now, but I still have a soft spot for the 500 unit SOD..

Rezca · Jun 24, 2015

bryanw1995 said:
There are only 8 tiles around a city...

X----X----X
X----C----X
X----X----X

I like the OP's suggestion, it seems odd to have 4x the number of UPT available to a city. Is that the case with Forts also? You could put Forts all around a city in that case and really stack up the defenders...

Are you guys seeing more/most people playing with Xupt instead of unlimited? I've played so much ciV over the past few years that I'll admit to being used to only 1UPT now, but I still have a soft spot for the 500 unit SOD..

Seeing a stack of 200+ units is frightening indeed, but I'd take that over a 1UPT any day of the week. At most I'd cap it around 50, 80, or 100 - but I'd never play with anything less than 40 per tile. As it is, I'm just playing with unlimited. It's one of those options that I just can't seem to enjoy playing with - like Useable Mountains and Realistic Corporations. :blush:

nionios · Jun 25, 2015

bryanw1995 said:
I like the OP's suggestion, it seems odd to have 4x the number of UPT available to a city. Is that the case with Forts also? You could put Forts all around a city in that case and really stack up the defenders...

I think that forts don't count as cities for the xUPT feature although they behave like cities for defensive bonus.

Unit per tile limit in cities

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